Rafa Benitez refused to go in to detail as it appears Liverpool are even struggling to sign free transfers to the club.
It is understood that Benitez had identified Marouane Chamakh, the highly rated Bordeaux front man, as a key signing for the summer. The player is available on a pre-contract deal. However, it looks like the reds are likely to lose out to Arsenal in his capture.
Privately, it appears that the Liverpool board have been dragging their heels as Liverpool’s financial crisis continues to impact upon the reds ability to bring players to Anfield – even potential free transfers.
At his press conference Rafa simply said.
“No, I don’t think we will sign him. I don’t want to say too much.”
Meanwhile Liverpool are believed to be edging closer to the transfer of Milan Jovanovich, another free transfer from Standard Liege.
Marouane Chamakh looks overated anyway judging by his stats! I know you can’t always judge by these figures, but we have plenty of players who can do good work for the benefit of the team, what we need is prolific goalscorers to help out Torres!!
Quit the bollocks lads. We’ve signed a good player in Jovanovich (on a free too by the way). OK, so we missed out on Chamakh, who cares. Don’t make this thing sound like Rafa is about to walk out the door before the end of the season. If he goes, it’ll be in the summer.
I don’t think we made it sound like Rafa wouldn’t see out the season. I think he will do that.
But I remember the reason he left Valencia. Arguably with a sale of Babel in the summer getting the pair of these would have been ideal to give us some genuine competition up front.
Well perhaps all for the best. What with reports of Jovanovic to arrive this summer the sub bench is already being elongated and had Chamakh been arriving a problem would have arisen. It is always possible that a few of the stand seats could be , how can I say , “re-configured” to accomodate these added substitutes ?